Are you measuring these 7 areas in your corporate wellness program?

AdvantageHealth, based in Minnesota, designs each corporate wellness program based on clients’ business plans and culture, and then implements, manages and evaluates it throughout its existence. This is the last of 7 blog posts where we discussed the seven foundational elements of employee wellness in detail as identified by the Statewide Health Improvement Program (SHIP) and Living Health in Washington County (LHWC).

This week we will discuss STEP 7: ESTABLISHING AND/OR MEASURING POLICY, ENVIRONMENT OR SOCIAL SUPPORTS FOR EMPLOYEE WELLNESS: Determining your level of success.

The seventh step is to determine how your program went based on your goals and objectives. You can measure participation, participant satisfaction, changes in attitude/knowledge/behavior, biometric changes, productivity and cost containment. Seven areas to measure include:

Participation: Record the number of employees who register for a program and who complete a program. Notice if programs are more successful at different times of the day, of the week or of the year. Are there certain topics that are more popular like a winter weight management challenge or a fall walking program?

Participation satisfaction: Develop a short survey that will help you capture employees’ satisfaction with the wellness program. Administer the survey after each wellness program. Determine if you will have an online survey or paper survey. Allow for a few open ended responses within each survey to capture additional feedback.

Changes in attitudes, knowledge or behaviors. Ask questions that capture this information within the surveys.

Biometric measures: Consider testing cholesterol, glucose, BMI and blood pressure on an annual basis or and the beginning / end of a program.

Productivity: Review changes in morale, absenteeism and turnover.

Return-on-investment: Changes in health care costs, workers’ compensation, disability claims, absenteeism, productivity and other measures important to your organization. You may need help from an outside organization.

Changes in culture, policy, environment: Are there new norms that have been accepted into the culture? A good goal is 1 – 3 new norms each year. Are there new policies or positive changes to the environment? Record the changes each year.